(CGTN) Mandarin Chinese and other foreign languages, including Polish, Lithuanian and Portuguese, are to be offered as subjects of Ireland's Leaving Certificate Examinations, a cabinet minister said on Wednesday.

The Leaving Certificate Examinations, commonly referred to as the Leaving Cert, is the final examination in the Irish middle school system.

Irish Education Minister Richard Bruton said the move will help students prepare for the economic threat posed by Brexit and the increasing global importance of the non-Western countries.

The Chinese course has been running at the Italian school for five years, and 145 of its 910 students have chosen to study the language.

Maria Silva Boccardi, director of the school, said Chinese will become a global language in the future and they set up the course because many students had asked for it.

"There were only a few schools (in Italy) who provided trial Chinese courses back then, but now, Chinese courses have become a crucial part of our overall teaching plan and we are welcoming our pioneer batch of graduates this year," she said.

Statistics show that there are now about 150 schools providing Chinese courses in Italy, according to Guangming Daily.